


First

by icarus_chained



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Ancient History, Character Study, Death, Gen, Quickening, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-13
Updated: 2012-04-13
Packaged: 2017-11-03 13:26:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You always remember your first," they say. First head, first Quickening. Methos ... considers that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First

**Author's Note:**

> *shrugs* A somewhat visceral and bloody musing

"You always remember your first," they say. Which is about as useless a statement as "your keys are always in the last place you look", Methos has always thought. You don't remember it because it's your first. It's your first because it's the one you remember. Or maybe, it's the one that _counts_ because it's the one you remember.

"What was the first head you took?" It's a common enough question, though depending on company often considered in bad taste. And Methos sometimes finds it blackly amusing, that you can immediately age the immortal asking it, particularly by _how_ they ask it. "Who was the first immortal you killed?" versus "What was the first head you took?". Young, shaken, then old, jaded. Then, perhaps, young again, or more jaded yet: "Who was he, your first? Do you remember, anymore?"

You always remember your first. It's not true, though. It's not. You'll remember ... _someone_. One of them, maybe more. You'll remember one of them, the one that mattered, maybe. It might even actually have been your first, objectively speaking, though once enough time passes, there really isn't such a thing as 'objective' anymore. And after a while, it won't matter. In your head, you'll think of that one, the one you remember, as 'the first'. The one that mattered. Regardless of the actual facts of the matter.

Look, he's a jaded old man, alright? And memory isn't as reliable as people like to think it is.

"Who was your first, Methos? Do you even remember anymore?"

He's not the only one jaded, is he? He laughs, a little blackly, a little sadly. Oh, heavens, no. Not at all. Youth and age in an endless cycle, and he is younger, now, less jaded than the proud and exhausted youth before him. Or more. Past a certain point, it gets hard to tell. Age is as relative as anything else. So few, the absolutes of this world.

But still. There's a question. And how to answer. How to answer. Because you can age the immortal by his answer, too. Not absolutely, but relatively. Older, younger, less cynical, more. How far back does the memory go? And, more importantly, why?

Does he remember who, or only what? Was it his first, or only the first he remembers, or only the most important he remembers? Did they have names, did they need them, did they matter? Does he?

Did he live before he killed? Does anyone?

Five thousand years, he told Mac. Five thousand years since my first Quickening. Before that, the memory gets a little shaky. So, there was a head. And he took it. And it's the first thing he remembers clearly, the first thing he knows for sure he did. The first thing that mattered enough to remember, though perhaps not the first that mattered at all. The first thing he remembers is a Quickening.

Does Duncan even realise what that meant? Does Duncan understand just how much he had revealed, there? But no, no, probably not. The poor boy's still a little hung up on the whole 'five thousand years' part. Which, he will grant, is a lot to take in. Entirely understandable to miss what was going on around it.

But that's the thing, isn't it? The numbers, they don't mean anything. The years. They don't matter. Five, ten, a thousand, a million. Meaningless. First, second, third. It's not the order that matters, not the length, not the absolutes, not the facts. Only the relatives. Only the memories. Only the precedence they take in your mind. Five thousand years doesn't mean a damned thing. It doesn't matter if that immortal was his first.

What matters, what mattered, what will always matter, is that he remembers. Of all the things in his life, that was the first he remembered. That, whoever and whatever it was, is what matters to him.

And no. He doesn't know who the immortal was. There were memories in the Quickening, he thinks. Experience, information. Or maybe there weren't. Maybe those are just the echoes of other, later Quickenings, echoes of his own past before he remembers, echoes of things he learned longhand, sooner or later, before or after. He doesn't know. It doesn't, he thinks, particularly matter. He knows the things he knows, as much as anyone can know anything, as much as anyone can trust the things inside their own heads, and really, that's all that matters.

He doesn't remember the name, if the immortal even had one. He doesn't remember the life, if the immortal lived one. He doesn't remember who the man was, before he died.

To be fair, he doesn't remember who _he_ was, either. It's all the one, really.

What he _does_ remember, though, was what it was like. What it felt like, what it cost, what it killed, what it saved. He remembers why it mattered, to him. He remembers ... what it made him.

It was ... brutal. Hah! But death so often is. Always is, no matter what pretty lies and causes we put atop it. It was ... savage, and desperate, and _useless_ , and meaningless, and in all the world, it mattered to no-one. Except him.

He'd run. And run, and run. He'd been born running, so far as he knew. The terror searing in his chest, his heart shuddering with it. The air tearing his throat apart with every breath, rasping from him in desperate sobs, clawing for air, for life. His feet tearing over and over again on the stones, healing again, unimportant, unnoticed, except that the thing could _follow_. The demon behind him could follow those bloody footsteps, could scent his blood on the air, and follow, and follow, and follow. And never let him go, until he was finally run to ground.

He'd killed it before, he thinks. Once, twice, a hundred times. He doesn't remember them, exactly. He only knows he did. He hadn't understood, not until the rush of Quickening in his veins, what he was, what that demon was, why the buzz of it had pressed against the back of his skull for days and weeks and months and years, always behind him, always hunting, always following. Always _there_. He hadn't understood.

But he'd killed. He knows he did. Every time it caught him up, every time it came close. He'd shot it, the sling light, too light, in his hand, and tripped it, and bludgeoned it, and threw it off a ridge, and burned the brush around it, and screamed, sobbed, as he pounded it with a rock, over and over again, as it laughed at him. He'd killed it. Him. It. Does he know who it was? No. No. But he knows what. Hah. First head, what, not who. One question answered, maybe. He's old. He's allowed.

He'd run from it. Killed it. It hadn't been a him, a her, hadn't had a name. It hadn't been a person. In all fairness, neither had he. Just the hunter and the hunted, the desperate killer and the thing that would not die. He'd been a boy, a man, a babe in arms. He can't remember what he'd been, anymore. He hadn't mattered, any more than it.

In the end, when he couldn't run, couldn't keep running, couldn't bear for one more day, one more second, to feel the pounding buzz of that thing against his skull, he'd stopped. He'd turned. He'd let it come. He'd killed it, all over again. Maybe he'd killed a hundred times, before that. It, him, other people. Who knows? Who cares? He'd killed before, maybe. But that ... that time was his first.

Because that time, he'd stayed. That time, when the blow caught his hunter from behind, stove in the back of that giant skull ... that time, he hadn't run. Not again, not like before. He'd been born running, the first time. He'd been born killing, the second.

And, you know, he doesn't really remember, what the immortal looked like. What it sounded like. No more than he remembers who it was. He remembers the laughing, the demon laughing as he cried, as he killed, but not the sound of it, only the sense. He remembers the skull shattering under his hands, so heavy around the rock, clenched tight where he'd lain in wait. He remembers the body, stretched out on the ground, but it could have been any body, male, female, demon, god, anyone at all. It could have been anyone, for all he knows. He doesn't remember that.

He remembers standing, the air wheezing through his arid mouth, the stink of fear-sweat drying on his skin. He remembers the cold, cold enough to freeze the earth, while the sun beat down upon him. He remembers the blood-caked dust on his hands, the white of his knuckles through it, the weight of the stone in his hands.

And he remembers the moment. The moment when he stopped running, not in the world, but in his head. The moment he stopped waiting to be killed, and turned to do the killing. Not in desperation, but in calculation. Not in fear, but in determination.

He'd killed that immortal. He bludgeoned it to pieces. No weapons, he'd never had any, neither of them ever had any. No swords, those pretty things they dance with these days. None of that. So he'd bludgeoned. He'd knelt beside that body, that demon, that immortal, that man, for ... oh, days. He doesn't know how long. How could he? But days, at least. He'd knelt there, beneath sun and moon, in blood and blood, and more blood, as he pounded, and pounded, rocks splitting under his hands, his hands splitting under the rocks, while the demon did not die. While the immortal laughed, and screamed, cracked and bitter and wild, and _did not die_.

He'd crushed it, and torn it, and felt the rush of triumph, the sick, dizzy rush of _yes_ , when limbs stopped healing, stopped coming back, when some bladed edge of stone, bluntly wielded, tore a hand mostly free, and blunt nails scrabbled at the edges to finish the tearing, pulled it free, let it _die_. He'd keened, sick with triumph, and the immortal had _smiled_. Smiled at him, laughed at him, this dizzy boy, this crying, bloody child.

Days, he thinks. Days, to tear it apart. Days, to reach the head, to pound through spine and sinew and muscle with a stone shaped like a shovel, like a blade, days before he tore the head free with shattered hands. Days, before the laughing stopped, and the screaming stopped, and the running stopped. Days, before the Quickening rushed into him like storm, and he realised _what he was_ , and who he was, the demon he was, and the man before him, the immortal before him, the men, the immortals, were gone, all gone, and he couldn't remember why. Never could. Never would.

Your first. His first. It's the first thing he remembers. It's the first thing he knew. The first thing that mattered. And it doesn't matter _at all_ , it never did, never will, but it's all he remembers, it's the first thing he remembers, and it's the _wrong question_ , what they ask, what they always ask. It's the wrong question.

"Who was the first immortal you killed? What was the first head you took?"

No. No, and no again. Not that. That's the wrong question.

The question is, who were you, before you killed them? The question is, what were you before you died? The question is, do you even remember what you were?

No, you don't. You never do. Not really. Maybe he's more literal than most, maybe his memory is more _not there_ than most. But no-one does. None of them do. None of them remember what they were, what it felt like, what it was like to live, before the first. That's why it's the first. Before it, nothing's real. Before it, nothing matters. After it, nothing matters more, but it's gone, and will never come back.

Joe took his first head in Vietnam. Mortal, immortal, demon, god. It doesn't matter. Joe took his first head in 'Nam, and Mac at Culloden, and Amanda a thousand years ago, and Alexa when her doctors took her aside, and the Watchers with Horton, and Methos, oh, Methos, five thousand years ago in blood and dust and a demon that would not die.

It's the first because it's the first thing you remember. It's the first because before it, you were not who you are. It's the first because it matters, not to them, not to the world, but to you. It's the first, and it doesn't matter who they were, how they died, how you killed them. It matters who you become because of it. It matters who survives, it matters who lives.

And he'll live. Every time. He'll live. Because he wants, because he always wants. Because he wanted so much, it's the only thing he remembers. The first thing he remembers. When there were no swords, no Game, no Quickenings, no rules, no justifications, no names, no memories, when he didn't _know_ , when he doesn't _remember_ , when there was nothing around it and all he remembered was that ... He wanted. He killed. With just a rock and his hands, because there was nothing else.

There was a head. And he took it. And it's the first thing he remembers.

"Do you remember your first, Methos? Do you remember who he was?"

They ask for reassurance. That they were right to kill, right to live. That they won because they were better. That it matters who dies, so it will matter when they do. That's what he wants to know, Duncan, this young-old-ancient-child. That's why he's asking. It's the wrong question. But he doesn't know that.

"Do you remember him, Methos?"

And the right answer to that, if there are right answers, is "No." No, he doesn't. No, he never will. No, none of them do. No, it's not even the right question. No-one remembers them. No-one will remember you. No-one will remember who you were. How can they, when you yourself forgot, so long ago?

That's the right answer. That's the truth, as far as he knows it. That's what he should say. But what he _actually_ says, Methos, what he tells the desperate child is:

"Of course, Mac. You always remember your first, right?" And a laugh, a little laugh. "Five thousand years, to my first Quickening. I told you that, remember? He's the first thing I remember."

After all, like he said to Joe. Why would he tell the truth? 

It's not like it will matter, in the end.


End file.
